MAKING THE BIENNALE

Work for the fourth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale is well underway. After a year of extensive international travel, curator Anita Dube has finalised a list of participating artists, many of whom have been announced by the Kochi Biennale Foundation.

Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life

“I remember Guy Debord’s warnings of a world mediated primarily through images—a society of the spectacle—as I write this note. That such a society is fascism’s main ally, we are all discovering in different parts of the world today.

Virtual hyper-connectivity has paradoxically alienated us from the warm solidarities of community—that place of embrace where we can enjoy our intelligence and beauty with others, where we can love—a place where we don’t need the ‘other’ as an enemy to feel connected.

At the heart of my curatorial adventure lies a desire for liberation and comradeship(away from the master and slave model) where the possibilities for a non-alienated lifecould spill into a ‘politics of friendship.’ Where pleasure and pedagogy could sit together and share a drink, and where we could dance and sing and celebrate a dream together.

In this dream, those pushed to the margins of dominant narratives will speak: not as victims, but as futurisms’ cunning and sentient sentinels.

And before speaking, they will listen, like K P Krishnakumar’s Boy Listening—to the stone and the flowers; to older women and wise men; to the queer community; to critical voices in the mainstream; to the whispers and warnings of nature—before it is too late.

If we desire a better life on this earth—our unique and beautiful planet—we must in all humility start to reject an existence in the service of capital. Through the potential of social action, coming together, we ask and search for questions, critical questions, in the hope of dialogue.”

Anita Dube, September 2018

A KNOWLEDGE LABORATORY

Imagining the Biennale Pavilion

The fourth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale marks a significant shift in the usual curatorial model. Along with the carefully designed exhibition spaces, curator Anita Dube envisions the Pavilion at Cabral Yard as a central space of dialogue that will continuously shape the Biennale throughout its run, both in the thematic frame, and experientially.

Designed by Anagram Architects, a young firm based in New Delhi, this year’s Pavilion moves beyond a physical venue for programmes (such as the Let’s Talk, Music of Muziris, and Artists’ Cinema series), acting as a space for anyone to share material within collaborative social and cultural discourses. In addition to the auditorium space, an integral part of the built environment at Cabral Yard will be a web-integrated space that allows anyone to publicly display their personal work or any online content, from music, to film, literature, to viral videos. Participants will also be able to perform and speak on open microphones, as well as write and draw on installed chalkboards, which will allow for the creation of a sort of daily buildable archive. Given the politically and socially engaged cultural fabric of Kerala, curator Anita Dube has high hopes for the generation and cross-dialogue of ideas.

“The laboratory will attempt to remove hierarchies of knowledge,” said Dube. “I hope to build a structure that accommodates for many modes of expression– and it’s for people to claim that structure. I think it will work best if treated like one big learning experiment.”